


I Wish

by Flora_Legium



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 17:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16392260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Legium/pseuds/Flora_Legium
Summary: Be careful what you wish for, you never know who might be listening, and what they might be willing to grant you in turn...





	I Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireEye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/gifts).



_“Oh, I wish, I_ **_wish_** _…”_

The words I’d spoken so thoughtlessly upon the road before came back to me now, tasting like ash in my mouth as I stumbled back. My breath caught strangled in my throat.  Beetle-wing beads and glittering diamonds clattered and scraped against one another as I twisted and crunched the skirts of the dress I wore between my fingers, and the twisted forms of the creatures that brought me here only continued to dance about me, jeering and laughing.

My eyes kept darting about, from a twiggy, bat-eared one here to a horned, dog faced one leering at me over there. “We brought her! We brought her!” the cacophony of their sing-song chanting grated at my ears, “Another one for the King!”

My heart was pounding and I just kept tracing back trying to escape, to get away…

Until I slammed hard against something firm and solid, with the slip of fabric and the clatter of a curtain behind me. I lept back, spinning around, my arms clasped around me and my nails digging into the meat of my arms.

It was a man, seated in a throne. His brows were as sharp as his cheekbones and he was all a lean predatory hunger. His hair was a pale gold, falling around his face in a wild, thistle-downish disarray, and his eyes -- one darker than the other -- raked up and over my form.

I shifted from foot to foot, even in this magnificent confection of a gown, even in the silver embroidered slippers and with a necklace that seemed more captured stardust than earthly jewels clasped about my throat, even with _all_  of this I could only think about how lank my hair was, how sodden through that gown and mud-spatted the shoes, while meanwhile, he practically _glittered._

“What _are_ you wearing, now?” He murmured, his glance sharp as he turned from me to the goblins still bounding about.

They stopped immediately. The ears of the one nearest to me dropped and he sank back “s-she would not come unless we gave them to her…” It said. And I felt for a moment, almost sorry for it.

Almost, yet it had been the only thing I could think of to avoid this, here, now.

“W-where am I?” I managed to sputter out, still staring wide eyed at the room surrounding me: all high roofed and stone walled, crowded with a magnificent half-drunken disarray of capering goblins, squawking chickens and the kicked up dust and feathers and crumbling leaves of ages past.

A sound, bored and edging towards irritated, somewhere between a grunt and a sigh -- As though the one making it though he had far better things to concern himself with than such petty matters -- was the only response to reach my ears. My eyes were unable to remain focused on any one thing for too long in that chaos I found myself in, yet they were drawn back to my captor as he replied, making a gesture that took in all of our surroundings.

“Away” He said.

He sat there, lounging back on that throne and watching me, eyes half-lidded and a cat’s grin curling at his lips as I stared back, grasping for words.

“Y-yes, but _where --”_

“Oh, I think you know _that.”_ And he waved aside my questioning as though it were the buzzing of so many flies.

I blinked at him , opening my mouth to protest, to say _something,_ **_anything,_ ** but no words came. Just silence as his answer sunk in fully. I did know. The Goblin City. I’d wished myself brought there and beg and plead for some other answer as I might, that would not change the truth of the matter, not of where I was, or who stood before me.

“The Goblin King.” I breathed, “You -- You’re him aren’t you? Your the Goblin King!”

That cat’s grin grew all the wider. He said no words, only shrugging his shoulders as he moved to his feet, prowling nearer to me.

I edged backwards, away from him. “I--I...please don’t...you don’t mean to harm me, do you?”

“Harm you?” He repeated,“ _You_ are the one who asked to be brought here!”

“Well, yes...But I just might be rethinking that now, and….” I trailed off.

“Rethinking? But this is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

What I _wanted?_ I thought back to myself, sitting in the cold and rain of that night, after walking over that long, winding road to the miller’s, and after waiting for hours and hours in that line of people only for the man to tell me that the sun was near setting and I would need to wait until morning for the flour mother had sent me out to get milled. I remembered shivering in my sodden cloak as trembling leaves splashed water against my face and I thought on how it was my sister who was _meant_ to be out here, how mother had asked her originally but she refused. How it was always me, every time, who did such tasks. And did I ever get a thank you? I remembered  thinking how worried mother would be -- and rightfully so! -- if I didn’t return, and how guilty my sister would feel. And I remembered...I remembered that spark, if only for a moment that warmed me from the inside as I thought of how poetic that justice would be. _And What if I_ **_did_ ** _disappear forever? How would they feel then?_

_“I wish the goblins_ **_would_ ** _take me away, right now!”_

But was this what I _wanted?_ My fingers curled up knotting at my skirts as I glanced around the room once more. “Er...well, that is to say…”

I trailed off and he quirked a brow at me. “You spoke the words, and I have only given you what you asked for.” Hushed laughter and hissing whispers went through the crowd of goblins surrounding us as his eyes raked over my form once more, “Indeed, _everything_ you asked for, it would seem.”

I shifted between my feet again, and found my gaze turning down towards the floor and those shining, silvery shoes on them. Well. He didn’t have to say it like that! It wasn’t as though I really wanted all of...all of _this_ to begin with! Any of it! But I had to try and say something to get rid of those goblins when I first met them, hadn’t I? _“Oh, I can’t go of to the goblin city looking like this! Dressed as a poor peasant! Bring me a new dress, bring me new shoes, some jewelry…”_ We were in the middle of nowhere! Where was I to think they would find a fine dress and new shoes for me? But they came back, with each item again and again…

I shook myself, squeezing my eyes shut as I took in a sharp breath and screwed up my courage. He should have known then that I didn’t want to come. When all of his little minions were doing errands back and forth! Well, I didn’t want to be here, away from everyone I knew forever! I didn’t want to live among goblins and fairies instead of people!

I didn’t want to have that wide, uncrossable gulf separating me and my family. Now I really was imagining that guilt my mother would feel, an empty pit right in her stomach as every day she would wish she hadn’t sent me off until the next morning. And my sister? Thinking every day that if only she had gone _this once..._ No, no, not this at all…

“No.”  I said, lifting my head and looking him in the eye, “No...I don’t want this.  I- I want to go back. Or...or at least win my freedom, if I can.”

Another, long,  bored sigh escaped him.There was silence, and then:

“It is rare that I have anyone wish _themselves_ here.” The Goblin King said consideringly.

Around us a new murmur went through the goblins that set me on edge, and then a hush. I could feel them leaning in, every set of eyes like a new weight on my shoulders.

“Perhaps,” the King said, “this will be interesting…”

And in the instant that those words were spoken, my vision went double. I stood outside the castle and the city and the labyrinth itself, or..I thought I did, feeling the air on my face, hearing birdsong and the buzz of insects. Yet also, I still stood inside, surrounded by the fug of goblin breath and the noise of it all. It was as though I were staring at a print of those illusions that seemed at one moment to be showing a vase, the next two faces. I stumbled forward, feeling the world spin around me.

“You have twelve hours.”  The Goblin King said.

~*~

So it is, he is to play the role of villain in this story once more. It is...what they _expect_ of him. What they _always_ expect of him. And he does not mind, yet at times Jareth wonders...well. There was a reason he chose this girl this time, wasn’t there? Because she _asked_ for it. But humans, fickle, flightly, and never truly understanding what they want until they receive it...in the end it is all the same. He is the one meant to teach some lesson or another yet never recieve any gratitude for it, the monster that frightens them, the fate they wish to avoid.

Because that is what they _want_ him to be _._

No matter, at least he is good at it. Though it does, at times, grow tiresome.

He let the thought pass as the goblins began to gather around him. Summoning a crystal to watch the girl’s progress, his eyes flickeed back towards her figure still standing in his throne room.

Well, whatever else there was to say about why or why not choose this girl he was not wrong about one thing: This would be _very_ interesting indeed.


End file.
